Federated States of Micronesia: Country Report on Human Rights

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Tina Takashy
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
Leadership Capacity ◽  
Country Report ◽  
Federal States ◽  
Regulatory Frameworks ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Status ◽  
Customary Laws

This article provides a country report on the status of human rights in the Federal States of Micronesia (FSM). FSM's legal and regulatory frameworks are a direct import of the US laws which were used during the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI) period. There is an inherent danger in prioritising introduced rights over traditional duties, obligations and rights – or vice versa – without subjecting these two sets of human rights paradigms to systemic sociocultural analysis. However, there are human rights issues in the FSM in any capacity. These issues originate from three major sources: poor governance and leadership capacity, weak law administrative and enforcement capacity, and outdated legal and political frameworks. The author then provides strategies to protect human rights in the Pacific including major legal and political reform, and the use of region-specific strategies (including codifying customary laws). The challenge going forward is to have in place a unified human rights model that is based on the diverse cultural, spiritual, and democratic heritage of the Pacific.  

Burden-sharing: the US, Australia and New Zealand alliances in the Pacific islands

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Wallis ◽  
Anna Powles
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
Burden Sharing ◽  
Military Capability ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Security Challenges ◽  
The Us

Abstract One of President Joseph Biden's foreign policy priorities is to ‘renew’ and ‘strengthen’ the United States' alliances, as they were perceived to have been ‘undermined’ during the Trump administration, which regularly expressed concern that allies were free-riding on the United States' military capability. Yet the broad range of threats states face in the contemporary context suggests that security assistance from allies no longer only—or even primarily—comes in the form of military capability. We consider whether there is a need to rethink understandings of how alliance relationships are managed, particularly how the goals—or strategic burdens—of alliances are understood, how allies contribute to those burdens, and how influence is exercised within alliances. We do this by analysing how the United States–Australia and Australia–New Zealand alliances operate in the Pacific islands. Our focus on the Pacific islands reflects the United States' perception that the region plays a ‘critical’ role in helping to ‘preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific region’. We conclude that these understandings need to be rethought, particularly in the Pacific islands, where meeting non-traditional security challenges such as economic, social and environmental issues, is important to advancing the United States, Australia and New Zealand's shared strategic goal of remaining the region's primary security partners and ensuring that no power hostile to their interests establishes a strategic foothold.

scholarly journals Review: Why the Pacific status quo is no longer an option

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 195
Author(s):  
Francis X Hezel
Keyword(s):  
Pacific Islands ◽  
Journal Editor ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Marshall Islands ◽  
The Road ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Opt Out ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Status ◽  
Family Land

Hezel, Father Francis X. (2015). Why the Pacific status quo is no longer an option. Pacific Journalism Review, 21(2): 195-196. Review of Idyllic No More: Pacific Island Climate, Corruption and Development Dilemmas, by Giff Johnson. Majuro, Marshall Islands: CreateSpace. 2015. 153 pp. ISBN 978-1-512235-58-6Giff Johnson’s latest work, Idyllic No More: Pacific Islands Climate, Corruption and Development Dilemmas, is a call to serious planning and more. The Marshall Islands Journal editor summons leaders to recognise that life has changed in the country and the status quo is the road to disaster. There was a time when this might not have been true—when people who wanted to kick back and live a simple island life could quietly opt out of school and retire to the family land to provide for themselves as their ancestors had done for generations in an island society that offered the resources, physical and social, to support its population.

scholarly journals The (Human) Rights of Nature: A Comparative Study of Emerging Legal Rights for Rivers and Lakes in the United States of America and Mexico

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Jane Macpherson
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Biodiversity Loss ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
International Consensus ◽  
Regulatory Frameworks ◽  
Rights Of Nature ◽  
The Status

An international consensus of scientific experts is now demanding "immediate action" in response to the environmental, climate, and biodiversity crises. But are our legal and regulatory frameworks equipped to respond to the rapid pace of environmental degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change? What incidence is there, transnationally, of laws that seek to protect the Earth from the humans that inhabit it? In the past few decades, there is a growing social, legal, and political movement towards more ecocentric regulation of the planet, where new laws and institutions seek to protect natural resources for their own intrinsic value. In this paper, I consider recent efforts to protect the rights of rivers in the U.S. and Mexico, which are novel and emerging attempts to discover new pathways for enhanced protection of vulnerable waterways. These attempts are being pragmatically driven from the bottom up to the highest levels of the legislature or judiciary as local communities (and sometimes Indigenous Peoples) become increasingly frustrated with apathetic and complacent governmental responses to environmental challenges, using whatever legal tools and processes are available to them. However, rather than an Earth-centred revolution, efforts to protect the rights of nature are distinctly "human"; as communities appeal to human rights laws, and their enhanced constitutional status, to upset the status quo. There are important lessons to be learned from these experiences in other countries in terms of the ability to entrench transformative environmental protections via constitutional hierarchies and the potential for the rights and interests of humans to be both an enabler of, as well as a threat to, nature's rights.

scholarly journals Australia: Country Report on Human Rights

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Jennifer Corrin
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Country Report ◽  
Human Rights Protection ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
The Status ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
The Common

This article provides a country report on the status of human rights in Australia. Human rights law in Australia is embodied in three sources: constitutional provisions, federal, state and territorial legislation, and the common law. However, the author notes that Australia has not embraced the 'rights revolution' seen elsewhere around the world as it does not have a constitutionally enshrined charter of human rights. This status of human rights under Australian law reflects the nation's conservative approach to constitutional law reform, and it is argued that the above sources of human rights law do not provide a comprehensive regime for the protection of human rights in Australia. However, several states have proved that popular support for human rights protection is a political possibility, which shows cautious optimism for the future of human rights laws in Australia.

scholarly journals GUAM, THE CENTER OF ASIA PACIFIC: A SOURCE OF GEO-STRATEGIC RIVALRY BETWEEN CHINA AND THE US

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 52-60
Author(s):  
Barkat Ali ◽  
Nazim Rahim ◽  
Muhammad Usman Ullah
Keyword(s):  
Air Force ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
Marine Corps ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Global Order ◽  
National Interests ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Us ◽  
The U.S

Guam is the U.S. unincorporated territory and military (base), which lies in the western part of the Pacific Islands. Guam serves as the lynchpin for the U.S. influence in the Pacific, is became the flashpoint between two nuclear powers of the region i.e. United States of America and China, due to its strategic geopolitical position. Nevertheless, Guam remained a conducive place for the U.S. naval basing as well as the territory to provide shorten and strategic edge for Washington to sustain her hegemony and influence in the region. The aim of this research paper is that, could the U.S. sustain her hold over Guam while facing the Chinese mesmerizing and clear empirical indicators of its military forces, particularly its navy, air force, missile technology, and its rapidly expanding marine corps, as the arbiters of a new global order—one that stands opposed to U.S. national interests and threat to its close allies in the region.

scholarly journals Mieniplotia scabra (Müller, 1774), another gastropod invasive species in Europe and the status of freshwater allochthonous molluscs in Greece and Europe

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 253 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. CIANFANELLI ◽  
E. TALENTI ◽  
M. BODON
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
First Record ◽  
Freshwater Molluscs ◽  
Freshwater Gastropod ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Status ◽  
Successful Invader ◽  
Water Species ◽  
Pacific Area

Mieniplotia scabra (Müller, 1774), a freshwater gastropod originating from the Indo-Pacific area, has proved to be a successful invader spreading to other parts of East Asia, Middle East, the Pacific Islands, North America and West Indies. This paper reports the first record of M. scabra from Europe, where it has become naturalized in Kos Island in Greece. This new trans-continental introduction brings to nine the number of alien freshwater molluscs species in Greece and to 30 in Europe. It is therefore given an updated snapshot on the presence of the numerous non-native fresh water species in Europe, divided by nation, an account that is currently lacking in literature and in the specific databases.

scholarly journals Human Rights Mechanisms in Small Pacific States: Implications for Dialogue about Regional Human Rights Mechanisms

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 279
Author(s):  
Joy Liddicoat
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
National Human ◽  
The Pacific

This article draws on research conducted by the New Zealand Human Rights Commission and the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat in regard to opportunities and challenges for national human rights mechanisms in small Pacific states. The author uses this research to highlight some of the issues and concerns in regards to the development of a regional human rights initiative. Suggestions are provided for the process to be used when engaging in dialogue regarding the implementation and development of  a regional human rights mechanism.

US Colonial Education in Guam, 1899–1950

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred P. Flores
Keyword(s):  
Pacific Islands ◽  
American Samoa ◽  
Virgin Islands ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Colonial Education ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Us Virgin Islands ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government

Following the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the illegal overthrow and annexation of Hawai‘i, the US government transplanted its colonial education program to places in the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands. Specifically, American Sāmoa, Guam, Hawai‘i, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and the US Virgin Islands would all have some aspect of the native boarding school system implemented. In many ways, the colonial education system in Guam was emblematic and exceptional to native boarding schools in the continental United States. Utilizing Guam as a case study reveals how the US military used schools as a site to spread settler colonial policies in an attempt to transform Chamorros into colonial subjects who would support American occupation.

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